Finger Pointing Over Trade

The Washington Post is reporting EU Will Not Improve on Farm Trade Offer.

The European Union said Wednesday it will not enhance its offer on farm trade, calling on the United States and others to match its concessions in talks to liberalize global trade through the World Trade Organization.

"I have no plan to make a further offer in agriculture," EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson told the European Parliament.

He said the farm trade concessions he has put on the table in the WTO talks were "the most substantial offer" the EU has ever made, and that making more "would further unbalance the (WTO) negotiations" that head for a ministerial round in Hong Kong in two weeks.

The EU has offered cuts of 70 percent in trade-distorting subsidies to farmers and farm produce exporters and cutting the EU's average agricultural tariff to 12 percent from 23 percent.

"Taken as a whole, this is the most substantial offer ever made by the European Union in any trade round," said Mandelson.

Mandelson accused the United States and others of dawdling, posturing and focusing excessively on farm trade issues at the expense of progress in other areas of liberalizing world trade. He said a global trade deal can only happen if Europe's partners "stop hiding behind unfounded criticism of the EU, or patently unrealistic and tactical demands ... If they continue merely to ask for more from Europe, without paying into the pot themselves, they _ not we _ risk destroying" the current round of negotiations.

Is that the biggest finger pointing episode since Babe Ruth's famous point in the 1932 World Series between the Cubs and the Yankees?

Probably not, but even if so, I doubt anyone makes a movie out of it.
There are neither legends nor heroes in this round of finger pointing.

Mike Shedlock / Mish
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/